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The idea of a universal basic income has gathered popularity in the world today as a practical utopia in a dying post-modern world. A universal basic income is usually defined as an unconditional amount of money given to all in a political community. Yet, even most academics that speak of UBI do not really tackle the question of what money is and how it is produced. Most people in fact take money as a given without critical engagement into the nature of money itself. Indeed, money is the ocean in which we swim. Like fish in the water, we do not think of money as much. But where does money come from?

This talk dwells into a discussion about the different ways in which money has been conceived and its relationship to the ongoing debate about Universal Basic Income.

Is money a commodity or a form of debt? Is money a process or is money a thing? The ideas we have about money both shape and shift the way that money works. What happens when we conceive of money differently?

How would producing money differently change the way we relate to each other and our wider relationships with the world?

This talk will end with a surprise.

Join this conversation on universal basic income and money at Universo, grab some basic income food and drinks, or just come talk to us!

Speaker: Julio Linares is an economic anthropologist from Guatemala, currently researching the relationship between imagination and revolution at the London School of Economics, where he is supervised by David Graeber.